UN Security Council special session on weapons of mass destruction: Jan 18, 2018

January 1, 2018

The United Nations Security Council will hold a special thematic debate on January 18 on the topic of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction and Confidence Building Measures‘.

The debate will be chaired by Kazakhstan President Nazarbayev, and will have a strong focus on diplomacy and trust-building as important elements to prevent proliferation of WMD and to advance disarmament including nuclear disarmament.

Kazakhstan has undertaken national and regional disarmament initiatives, including relinquishing all the nuclear weapons that were on their territory and negotiating a Central Asia Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone. They have also put forward a number of disarmament proposals to the United Nations, including:

a call ‘on all Member States, especially the Security Council’s permanent members, to set a goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons by the UN’s 100th Anniversary in 2045.‘

a proposal for UN members to contribute 1% of their military spending to fund the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The veto power of the Permanent Members (China, France, Russia, UK and USA) makes it difficult to adopt resolutions on these proposals at the Security Council.

Contact Security Council Members

UNFOLD ZERO encourages you to contact the Security Council Members urging them to support nuclear disarmament initiatives in the January 18 Security Council debate. In addition to supporting the goal of the global elimination of nuclear weapons by 2045, all the Security Council members should be encouraged to announce at the Security Council Session that they will attend the UN High-Level Conference on Nuclear Disarmament at the highest level.

In addition, the Permanent Five Security Council Members – China, France, Russia, UK and USA – should be encouraged to commit to:

no-first-use, i.e. to never initiate a nuclear war (or to call on the nuclear-reliant States to make such a commitment), and to

drastically cut the $100 billion annual nuclear weapons budget, and re-invest some of these resources in economic and social need (such as the SDGs), as they are required to do under Article 26 of the UN Charter;

The non-nuclear Security Council Members who have not yet signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (Bolivia, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden) should be encouraged to do so on January 18.